While most celebrities and politicians would lay low after a threat from one of the world’s most powerful drug lords, it’s clear that backing down isn’t in Donald Trump’s vocabulary. This especially since it is Joaquin Guzman, the top Mexican drug lord known as “El Chapo” (the midget), escaped from his maximum security holding cell Saturday morning in Mexico, who is threatening Trump.
Donald Trump responded to the escape on Twitter, asking his supporters, “Can you envision Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton negotiating with ‘El Chapo’, the Mexican drug lord who escaped from prison? ….” El Chapo responded to Trump’s tweet with a tweet of his own saying that Trump will “eat his words” for speaking out against him and the Mexican government.
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It is here that Trump made the argument about the border problems, since the escape of El Chapo from a maximum-security prison in Mexico sent ripples of outrage Sunday through Chicago’s law enforcement community who had long argued that Chicago should get first crack at Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, as he was charged in perhaps the most important narcotics case ever brought there.
The Chicago Crime Commission was poised to name Guzman Public Enemy No. 1 in Chicago again. This is the first time that the term “Public Enemy No. 1″ has been used since the Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone. El Chapo sells more drugs today than Escobar did at the height of his career. El Chapo is considered responsible for the deaths of about 34,000 people.
The Justice Department tells us that Colombian and Mexican cartels reap $18 billion to $39 billion from drug sales in the United States each year. Still, even if you take the lowest available numbers, El Chapo emerges as a titanic player in the global black market. In the sober reckoning of the RAND Corporation, for instance, the gross revenue that all Mexican cartels derive from exporting drugs to the United States amounts to only $6.6 billion. By most estimates, though, El Chapo has achieved a market share of at least 40 percent, and perhaps as much as 60 percent, which means that El Chapo’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, Facebook.
The story proves that Trump was right about the problems coming from Mexico. About 62 of the 120 drug trafficking tunnels that have been found have been linked to El Chapo’s organization, and last week, a new tunnel was discovered that connects San Diego, California, with Tijuana, Mexico. The ironic thing about this whole story is that while Trump was right, El Chapo’s criticism of Trump is not much different from the rest of Trump’s critics regarding Mexico’s situation. El Chapo was even issued a California Driver’s License, according to a report from Univision obtained in 1988 under one of his aliases, Max Aragon, showing face picture, the issue date, his height, his age, and an alleged address in the city of Los Angeles. It was issued while he was already a wanted man by the DEA. Perhaps El Chapo (the midget) should be extended an invitation to appear on the same slandering lineup with the rest of the chickens that want to take turns pecking on Trump. Or perhaps the day will come when they, including El Chapo, will be the ones who “eat their own words.”
Finding the chickens these days is very easy. Just peruse the litany of slander on Trump every morning to read the silly headlines. The most chicken-like headline today was by PoliticusUSA, which read: “Spineless Coward John Boehner Refuses to Condemn Donald Trump’s Racism.” They are upset that Boehner is not lined up for the pecking order while Mexico sends its worst. Dare you not peck and you are labeled ‘chicken’ despite the fact that chickens are the ones who peck.
What makes a ‘chicken’ is the fear of what Trump is confronting on his own, and El Chapo is the most recent in the pecking order except that El Chapo is no chicken.
The story begs the question: what is the difference between what the chickens say, what the politicians say, what the media says, and what El Chapo, the Mexican drug lord, says regarding Trump?
The answer is nothing. The man on the street can tell that Trump is the only real fox who is terrifying all the hens that are making noise all day long while they spin in the media rotisserie.
